If the news is really bad for Masahiro Tanaka — and, these days in baseball, is it ever good when the words "elbow soreness" are used in the same sentence with a star pitcher? — then the letters MRI should stand for something else entirely for the Yankees.

Must Resell Immediately.

Because if this is it for Tanaka, if the one saving grace on this Yankees team needs Tommy John surgery to repair a tear in his pitching elbow, general manager Brian Cashman should just hang an "Everything Must Go" sign on the Yankee Stadium facade and start seriously thinking about the future.

We’re not just talking about 2015, either, because if it takes Tanaka the full 12-18 months to recover, the Yankees could find themselves in the same awful spot a year from today. This is about 2016 and beyond, about accepting that this team, with all the injuries and underachievers, wasn’t going anywhere.

If that means trading closer David Robertson for prospects, so be it. If that means seeing if a real contender wants to rent starter Hiroki Kuroda for the stretch run, go for it. The Yankees, who have always collected big names and bigger contracts, have few assets with trade value, but that shouldn’t stop Cashman from shopping.

Forget the idea that this is not "in the Yankees’ DNA," or that the weak AL East will keep them in the race. This team, which already has lost three-fifths of its expected starting rotation, only had a puncher’s chance to do something this season because Tanaka was as close to automatic as a pitcher comes every five days.

He is the reason they’re still in the conversation. That conversation ends if this 15-day stay on the disabled list turns into something more serious, and Yankees fans are forgiven if they’re not waiting for the official diagnosis before entering full panic mode.

The MRI is a routine test, one that used to bring the fear of something serious. Now, that’s almost the expectation. If your team has an ace capable of electrifying a ballpark every five days, it feels like a matter of when, not if, that the four worst words in sports — torn ulnar collateral ligament — will apply to him.

Jose Fernandez. Matt Harvey. Patrick Corbin. Jarrod Parker and Matt Moore and, most recently, Bronson Arroyo. Fifty-nine players in the majors and minors have had Tommy John surgery since February, and that incredible list includes many of the best young starting pitchers in the sport.

One day, a team is building toward something with a certified ace as its cornerstone. The next? Well, there are more than a few Mets fans with Harvey jerseys who can explain what that looks like if their Yankee friends can’t envision it.

Chances are, those Yankees fans can, and they have. But this is not merely bad for the Yankees, although it is hard to imagine a team less capable of losing a player than this team and this player.

This is not just bad news for Major League Baseball, which will see a another young star disappear for a year or more just as he was starting to become a dominant, must-see fixture in a major market.

This is bad for the entire sport internationally, because the aftershocks from a major injury to the Japanese star would be felt on the other side of the world. Tanaka is one of the rare talents who can attract eyeballs on more than one continent.

"There wasn’t anything that led us to believe that there was anything wrong with him," manager Joe Girardi said. "I think you’re always worried, but you have to wait to hear what (the doctors) say and go from there."

Girardi has to understand that the "go from there" is nowhere without Tanaka. The Yankees are 13-5 with him and 31-39 without him, and that includes a 1-3 record in his last four starts in which his velocity decreased.

The Yankees manager has done an admirable job with a patchwork lineup the past two seasons, and in some ways, he’s at his best when dealt a lousy hand. But he has to know that without Tanaka, Derek Jeter will head into retirement after a meaningless late summer and early autumn, just the way his old pal Mariano Rivera did last year.

This goes beyond one season. The word "rebuild" is not one uttered in the Bronx, but you have to wonder about the hopes for 2015, too, if Tanaka misses the customary 18 months for a UCL tear. Honestly, wouldn’t the Yankees be better off as sellers than buyers as the trade deadline approaches?

This news would be that devastating, and it no doubt would lead to criticism that Cashman didn’t show enough caution giving Tanaka a $155 million contract given all the innings the 25-year-old had thrown in Japan.

That, however, would be unfair. The Marlins tried to bring the talented Fernandez along slowly, capping his innings and shutting him down early, and it didn’t work. The Nationals did the same with Stephen Strasburg. Matt Harvey had such a smooth delivery that was supposed to protect him from the UCL tear, but he fell victim just the same.

"I don’t think anybody has a true answer of why," Marlins manager Mike Redmond said when Fernandez went down in May. "I wish we could find a reason for it because it’s sad. I wish we could figure out a way to keep these guys on the field."

Tanaka is headed to the 15-game disabled list, and Yankees fans can only hope — pray — that his stay is no longer than that. And if the news is as bad as everyone fears? Let the fire sale in the Bronx begin.